South Korea's beloved national dish kimchi finds itself in the midst of a trade war between China and South Korea, reports the New York Times. South Korean kimchi exports to China used to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars until a few years ago when the Chinese government decided to classify the fermented cabbage dish as a 'pickle'.
What's wrong with pickles? Well that seemingly harmless category change also means new hygiene requirements; pickles need to be sterilized and low in bacteria before being they are allowed to be sold in China. That category change has virtually killed Korean kimchi sales in China because of the food's high bacteria content. South Korean kimchi exports to China were almost non existent in 2013 when they were worth just $108. They rose to $16,800 in 2014 but this is still a very unimpressive number compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars exports used to be worth.
As if that was not enough, China has continued to rub salt in the wound by flooding the South Korean market in the last few years with cheaper, made-in-China kimchi, undercutting local producers and sellers. One kimchi vendor in Seoul conceded, “We cannot make much without importing things from China.” The trade imbalance has created something of an identity crisis for South Koreans.
“We are feeling a sense of crisis as the owners of kimchi,” Kim Young-rok, a South Korean politician, told the New York Times.
China has promised to revise the regulations, but it remains unclear if it will reclassify kimchi. South Korea's wilting kimchi industry's future is in the hands of China, who is currently calling the shots on one of Korea's national treasures.
SEE ALSO: Travel - Eating South Korea
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